Programming stress‐induced altruistic death in engineered bacteria
Abstract Programmed death is often associated with a bacterial stress response. This behavior appears paradoxical, as it offers no benefit to the individual. This paradox can be explained if the death is ‘altruistic’: the killing of some cells can benefit the survivors through release of ‘public goo...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Springer Nature
2012-11-01
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| Series: | Molecular Systems Biology |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/msb.2012.57 |
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| _version_ | 1849738828156239872 |
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| author | Yu Tanouchi Anand Pai Nicolas E Buchler Lingchong You |
| author_facet | Yu Tanouchi Anand Pai Nicolas E Buchler Lingchong You |
| author_sort | Yu Tanouchi |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Programmed death is often associated with a bacterial stress response. This behavior appears paradoxical, as it offers no benefit to the individual. This paradox can be explained if the death is ‘altruistic’: the killing of some cells can benefit the survivors through release of ‘public goods’. However, the conditions where bacterial programmed death becomes advantageous have not been unambiguously demonstrated experimentally. Here, we determined such conditions by engineering tunable, stress‐induced altruistic death in the bacterium Escherichia coli. Using a mathematical model, we predicted the existence of an optimal programmed death rate that maximizes population growth under stress. We further predicted that altruistic death could generate the ‘Eagle effect’, a counter‐intuitive phenomenon where bacteria appear to grow better when treated with higher antibiotic concentrations. In support of these modeling insights, we experimentally demonstrated both the optimality in programmed death rate and the Eagle effect using our engineered system. Our findings fill a critical conceptual gap in the analysis of the evolution of bacterial programmed death, and have implications for a design of antibiotic treatment. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-81c0eec00d874a6a82f14107df9e43fb |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 1744-4292 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2012-11-01 |
| publisher | Springer Nature |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Molecular Systems Biology |
| spelling | doaj-art-81c0eec00d874a6a82f14107df9e43fb2025-08-20T03:06:27ZengSpringer NatureMolecular Systems Biology1744-42922012-11-018111110.1038/msb.2012.57Programming stress‐induced altruistic death in engineered bacteriaYu Tanouchi0Anand Pai1Nicolas E Buchler2Lingchong You3Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke UniversityDepartment of Biomedical Engineering, Duke UniversityDepartment of Physics, Duke UniversityDepartment of Biomedical Engineering, Duke UniversityAbstract Programmed death is often associated with a bacterial stress response. This behavior appears paradoxical, as it offers no benefit to the individual. This paradox can be explained if the death is ‘altruistic’: the killing of some cells can benefit the survivors through release of ‘public goods’. However, the conditions where bacterial programmed death becomes advantageous have not been unambiguously demonstrated experimentally. Here, we determined such conditions by engineering tunable, stress‐induced altruistic death in the bacterium Escherichia coli. Using a mathematical model, we predicted the existence of an optimal programmed death rate that maximizes population growth under stress. We further predicted that altruistic death could generate the ‘Eagle effect’, a counter‐intuitive phenomenon where bacteria appear to grow better when treated with higher antibiotic concentrations. In support of these modeling insights, we experimentally demonstrated both the optimality in programmed death rate and the Eagle effect using our engineered system. Our findings fill a critical conceptual gap in the analysis of the evolution of bacterial programmed death, and have implications for a design of antibiotic treatment.https://doi.org/10.1038/msb.2012.57altruistic deathantibiotic responseeagle effectprogrammed cell deathsynthetic biology |
| spellingShingle | Yu Tanouchi Anand Pai Nicolas E Buchler Lingchong You Programming stress‐induced altruistic death in engineered bacteria Molecular Systems Biology altruistic death antibiotic response eagle effect programmed cell death synthetic biology |
| title | Programming stress‐induced altruistic death in engineered bacteria |
| title_full | Programming stress‐induced altruistic death in engineered bacteria |
| title_fullStr | Programming stress‐induced altruistic death in engineered bacteria |
| title_full_unstemmed | Programming stress‐induced altruistic death in engineered bacteria |
| title_short | Programming stress‐induced altruistic death in engineered bacteria |
| title_sort | programming stress induced altruistic death in engineered bacteria |
| topic | altruistic death antibiotic response eagle effect programmed cell death synthetic biology |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/msb.2012.57 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT yutanouchi programmingstressinducedaltruisticdeathinengineeredbacteria AT anandpai programmingstressinducedaltruisticdeathinengineeredbacteria AT nicolasebuchler programmingstressinducedaltruisticdeathinengineeredbacteria AT lingchongyou programmingstressinducedaltruisticdeathinengineeredbacteria |